Stories related to: religion

Islam has topped Roman Catholicism as the world's biggest religion for the first time, the Vatican said today. About 1.1 billion people are still Catholic, but Muslims have pulled ahead with 1.3 billion members. “For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us,” said a prelate who compiled the Vatican's yearbook of 2008 statistics. More »

Seven members of a Russian doomsday cult, all women, have emerged from the cave where they have been holed up since November, awaiting the end of the world (note: in May), Itar-Tass reports. Twenty-eight more remain in the cave southeast of Moscow—but they are expected to come out soon, as melting snow has caused part of the cave to collapse. More »

A Philippines edition of dependably naughty Playboy magazine launches Thursday, but fans looking for flesh can forget it, Reuters reports. Instead of aiming at lads, the mag targets mature dads, and religious considerations mean full-frontal nudity is a no-no. It’ll burst instead with well-written articles on “everything under the sun of interest to men,” the editor says. More »

The former legal counsel to Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush is siding with Barack Obama, calling the Democrat “a person of integrity, intelligence and good will.” Doug Kmiec disagrees with the candidate on gay marriage, abortion, states’ rights, and the place of religion in the public sphere, but he says Obama’s ability to engage opposing viewpoints won him over. More »

Christmas’ religious meaning is lost in a sea of advertising, parties, and major retail dollars, but Easter has resisted becoming a “consumerist nightmare”—and that’s because its Christian origins demand serious thought, writes James Martin in Slate . While “the Christmas story is easily reduced to pablum,” Easter’s story of crucifixion and resurrection is “relentlessly disconcerting,” Martin observes. More »

This Good Friday is not simply the most solemn day in the Christian calendar but a convergence of movable feasts that doesn't occur more than once in a century. March 21 is also the first day of the Jewish festival of Purim and the celebration of the birth of the prophet Muhammed. The three holidays have fallen on the same day only nine times in 800 years, Time reports. More »

Nearly 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union's atheist empire, Mikhail Gorbachev has admitted he is a Christian, reports the Daily Telegraph . On a visit to Italy the last president of the Communist state prayed at the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi, and later told priests the saint had played a fundamental role in his life. "St. Francis is, for me, the alter Christus, the other Christ," said Gorbachev. More »

Black pastors and parishioners—including the 3,000 who packed Trinity Church in Chicago Sunday—are leaping to the defense of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who's drawn a firestorm of criticism for his incendiary rhetoric on racism, the Washington Post reports. A pamphlet circulating the pews decried Wright’s treatment in the media as a “modern-day lynching.” “We are all being vilified,” the new pastor said. “This is an attack on the African American church tradition.” More »

Jeremiah Wright, the militant Chicago minister and spiritual adviser to Barack Obama, is off the senator’s campaign, CNN reports. Wright will no longer sit on the senator’s African-American Religious Leadership Committee, the campaign announced. Obama has often said he rejects the reverend’s more incendiary opinions, especially his comment that the US deserved the 9/11 attacks. But yesterday the candidate went further, calling some old sermons that have come to light this week "inflammatory and appalling." More »

In the latest campaign preacher flap, TV networks are airing clips from sermons in which the former pastor of Barack Obama's church condemns "racist" US society and compares the candidate's experiences to Jesus' struggles, the Guardian reports. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human," said the fiery pastor who presided over Obama's marriage, baptized his kids, and provided the title of his biography. He also once described the 9/11 attacks as "America's chickens coming home to roost." More »

Barack Obama's home church in Chicago may be risking its tax-exempt status by promoting the candidate in sermons. Churches are allowed to support specific causes, but not candidates, and some experts say the praise—and attacks on Hillary Clinton— violate IRS laws. "There does seem to be a pattern of attempting to tip the scales," a law professor tells the Wall Street Journal. More »

Moses was high on mind-altering drugs when he heard God’s word on Mount Sinai, an Israeli researcher said this week. He contends that hallucinogenics were key to Jewish ceremonies and explain Moses' reception of the Ten Commandments and his vision of the burning bush. Benny Shanon, who teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, admits he's dabbled in such drugs himself. More »

Scientology is increasingly under attack on the Internet, where critics and dropouts are undermining the church's traditionally tight control of its public image, reports the LA Times . Three ex-Scientologists, including the niece of the church's head, launched ExScientologyKids.com last week. Its motto: "We were born. We grew up. We escaped." More »

Sajani Shakya, one of Nepal's living goddesses, is officially retiring at age 11, the AP reports. Religious leaders briefly stripped the Kumari of her divine status last year after she defied custom and traveled abroad, but her premature retirement isn't related to the controversy, officials say. She has "come of age," an official put it delicately. Kumaris are worshiped only until puberty. More »

Barack Obama's poor primary showings with Catholic voters could become more problematic in Catholic-heavy states like Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, Politico reports. Despite Obama's string of victories, Hillary Clinton has consistently grabbed a large percentage of Catholics, in part due to her popularity with majority-Catholic Hispanics. Analysts and Catholic politicians agree there's no singular reason that explains the coolness to Obama. More »

Efforts to reclaim lost virginity appear to be gaining steam across the country, MSNBC reports. More young women are declaring a sexual do-over, with some even opting for surgical replacement of the hymen, say doctors who’ve seen an increase in the procedures. “I felt really bad from a religious standpoint,” a 23-year-old single mother of two said, explaining her decision to spiritually revirginize. More »

Americans are swapping  religious affiliations at an accelerating rate, with 50% choosing  a different denomination than the one they were raised in, and 16%—double the number 20 years ago—saying the have no ties to a particular church, a new survey of religious life finds. That doesn't mean they're atheists, the Pew Forum report released yesterday concludes; only 1.6% say they are non-believers. More »

UK researchers will spend $3.7 million probing whether belief in God is a matter of nature or nurture, the Times of London reports. The University of Oxford crew will examine whether faith in a deity conferred an evolutionary advantage, or might be byproduct of other advantageous human characteristics, such as sociability. More »

A Florida church has issued a 30-day "sex challenge" to its members that's likely to be a much bigger hit with those who are married—at least the husbands among them—than the singles, the St. Petersburg Time s reports. The Relevant Church wants married couples to have sex every day for 30 days, and singles to abstain for the entire month. Leaders say this will strengthen marriages, and give unmarried couples the opportunity to discover how well they get along with their clothes on. More »

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has sparked a new controversy: The maverick leader is  now defending his plan to have every fifth grader study a French youth killed in the Holocaust. Critics, including Jewish analysts, warn the move could traumatize students. But one historian applauded Sarkozy's "courage" and said what children "see on television or in a horror film is much worse." More »